Heroin exacting a toll on suburbia

By Susan Frick Carlman scarlman@stmedianetwork.com Apr 1, 2011 09:28AM

Naperville Police Community Affairs officer Sgt. Gregg Bell show a small anount of heroin Thursday at the Naperville Police Station. Steven Buyansky~Sun-Times Media

This is not your parents’ heroin.

After gaining notoriety in the “psychedelic ’60s” before taking a back seat to cocaine, Ecstasy and other recreational drugs, abuse of the killer narcotic has resurged in recent years. Today heroin maintains a choke hold on many of those who abuse illegal substances, particularly young Chicago suburbanites. And it is deadlier than ever.

A recent Roosevelt University study found heroin use among teens in Chicago’s collar counties went up 46 percent between 2008 and 2009. The number of Illinois residents who checked in to publicly funded programs for treatment of addiction to the drug more than quadrupled from 1998 to 2008, reaching 17,411 at the end of the decade. Coroners’ records show that in DuPage and Will counties, 235 people died from heroin overdoses between 2005 and 2010. Three times in as many weeks last month, Naperville police arrested suspected heroin traffickers in the city.

via Heroin exacting a toll on suburbia – Naperville Sun.

I wonder where it’s coming from?

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